


Welcome to the Foundation

by megastarstrike



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, SCP Foundation
Genre: Alternate Universe - SCP Foundation, Developing Friendships, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22051792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megastarstrike/pseuds/megastarstrike
Summary: After an incident in his lab involving a mysterious stone and a swarm of armed guards storming him that resulted in his termination from the lab, Shuuichi didn't know what was happening in his own life anymore.Enter the SCP Foundation, Kokichi Ouma, and a war Shuuichi didn't expect to find himself dragged into by the first two items on this list.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 58
Kudos: 145





	1. Chapter 1

During his ten years as a leading scientist, Shuuichi Saihara thought he had seen it all. He had handled people trying to steal his research, countless explosions where there should have been none, interns slacking off and accidentally knocking over an unknown chemical, and so much more than what his professors had told him would be inevitable.

It was supposed to be a quiet night in the lab after a round of messy experiments. He had stayed behind to clean up after sending his labmates out for a restful night. 

This was anything but quiet.

Well, it wasn’t as if it was loud either, but Shuuichi was decently sure there shouldn’t be a red stone disc clinging to a mirror in his lab. He had originally sighed and equipped a pair of gloves to remove it, but upon it taking on a deep blue hue in his hands, he decided maybe it wasn’t a geologist who snuck it in from the other side of the facility.

He turned it over in his hand. The object had circular marks engraved into it, as well as other symbols he had never seen before (but then again, this wasn’t his field of study. Not like he would know). The markings themselves weren’t very deep, being only about half a centimeter deep into the stone. The stone felt cool in his hand, and his fingers wrapped around it easily. Still, something didn’t seem quite normal about this…

That feeling could also have come from the team of armed people surrounding him, now that he thought about it.

The leader seemed to be a tall man with wild, green hair, who had a gun aimed at him in an almost apologetic way (if that was even possible. It was a gun, for crying out loud).

“Sorry for all the fuss,” the leader said, “but you’re gonna have to drop that stone.”

The soldier next to him elbowed him.

“Oops. I meant drop it  _ gently. _ Or we’ll have to use lethal force.”

Shuuichi scrambled to set the stone down. He raised his palms up, eyes darting from soldier to soldier, trying to map out exactly what kind of scenario he had gotten himself into. Was this a crime he had unknowingly committed? Who were these people?

The leader stepped forward and set a mirror on the ground. After the disc latched onto it, he picked it up again and handed it to another soldier, who scurried away with it. And with that, he turned away and left. The swarm of soldiers followed him.

What the hell?

The soldiers hadn’t been careful with the equipment in his lab when they came rushing in. The chemicals on the counter that hadn’t been cleaned up yet had been pushed over the edge, left to spill their contents on the floor. Shuuichi knew exactly which chemicals were on that counter, and he knew he couldn’t clean it himself without risking a burn.

Shuuichi stared at the ruins of his lab, wondering how he was supposed to explain this to the facility managers.

* * *

“So what you’re saying is a stray animal somehow got into the facility and wreaked havoc in the secure lab?”

“Y-Yes, sir.”

Shuuichi flinched under the disbelieving stares of the head facility manager. The collared shirt he had frantically thrown on this morning in an attempt to look professional seemed all too warm now that he was put in the hot seat. Beads of sweat ran down his back, and his leg jittered up and down. He hadn’t felt this anxious since a year ago.

The facility manager looked him up and down before shaking his head. “Dr. Saihara, you’ve been using this lab for enough time for the other managers and I to know you’re not irresponsible enough to let something like the events of last week happen on your watch. However, it’s literally impossible for a stray animal to get into this facility. The farthest one has ever gotten is the lobby. Please tell the truth.”

Shuuichi froze as the manager leaned back, waiting for an answer.

The events of last week had been so hard to believe that Shuuichi would’ve brushed everything off as a dream if the lab hadn’t been trashed. He had seen so much weird shit in his career as a scientist, but nothing quite topped this. What was with the swarm of soldiers busting in like he had committed a crime? He had picked up a stone, for god’s sake. He had done a lot of regretful things in life, but crimes were not one of them.

Who would believe a story like that? What sane, logical human being would listen to him rattle this off and still believe him to be sane?

Not the head facility manager. The man was the most logical person Shuuichi had ever met, and he entertained nothing outside the realm of possibility. It would be a far cry to have him even hear Shuuichi out, much less get him to believe his story.

There was only one option for Shuuichi to take.

Shuuichi ducked his head. “That is the absolute truth, sir.”

The manager pursed his lips but stood from his seat anyway and held his hand out. “Well, this has been a productive meeting. Thank you for your time.”

Shuuichi shook the hand with a heavy heart.

Later that evening when he received paperwork calling for his termination, he sobbed his sorrows into a bottle of rum and the last paycheck he would ever get for doing something he loved.

* * *

An eternity passed before Shuuichi woke up, groggy and dizzy from the remnants of a hangover. He was getting too old for this “drinking ‘til you black out” shit, but it wasn’t like knowing that ever stopped him.

_ God, what year is it? _ Shuuichi thought to himself as he rubbed his head. He picked up his phone. Two days since he went to sleep, drunk and miserable. The last time he had slept that long was after a particularly stressful finals season when he was a junior in college. Why did he sleep for that long? He had to go to work—

Oh. No, he didn’t. Not anymore now that his reputation in the chemistry field was undoubtedly tanked from being fired.

Should he check? No, he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t check. He knew what happened last time he checked.

Okay, he had to check.

Before he knew it, he had spent the last two hours scrolling through pages upon pages of researchers deleting their affiliation with him, studies citing his work no longer being reliable, his former coworkers no longer being proud to work at the same lab he did. All of it was so painful. Every little step one person took felt like another stab to his heart. Why did he keep doing this to himself? Why was he still scrolling through?

Shuuichi sniffed and wiped the tears away from his eyes, turning his phone off. He had told himself it wouldn’t hurt after the first time it happened, but it still hurt, if not more so now.

God, the bags under his eyes looked horrible. He looked like a raccoon with the dark circles under his eyes, unkempt hair, and wrinkled clothes.

Then came a firm knock on his door. The sound was unmistakable.

Shuuichi glanced at himself once more in the reflection of his phone before deciding fuck it, he didn’t have the energy for this anymore. He crawled out of bed with the speed of a worm before flinging the door open to whatever poor bastard subjected to his face.

“Hey,” came a familiar voice. It belonged to a taller man with green hair and more jewelry than Shuuichi could count. “Remember me?”

Oh. Of course Shuuichi remembered him.

The man held his palms out and flashed a disarming smile. “Hey, don’t give me that look. It’s not my fault you got fired. I was just doing my job, as were you.”

Shuuichi took a deep breath. Admittedly, the stranger had a point. Neither of them could have predicted things would take such a wrong turn. “S-Sorry. I shouldn’t get too mad.”

“Nah, I’d be mad, too, if I were you. But…” He held up an envelope and grinned the sort of dangerous grin a predator would bare at its prey moments before disaster. “Maybe I can make it up to you?”

There was a lot of risk here, and given Shuuichi’s decades of experience, he detected there was something very wrong with this. Or maybe it was his anxiety spiking back up again after one of the biggest changes in his life. Perhaps it was the fact that someone who had pointed a gun at him just a week ago was at his apartment door wearing a casual striped shirt and long, baggy pants. Could’ve been either one or both, really.

Ah, fuck it. What did he have to lose at this point?

Shuuichi flung the door open and stepped aside with the enthusiasm of a cat in water. He sighed. “Come in.”

* * *

“My name is Rantarou Amami. I promise I’m not a bad guy. Nice to meet ya.”

Whenever someone introduced themselves like  _ that, _ Shuuichi couldn’t help but be a bit worried.

The two were seated across from each other at Shuuichi’s kitchen table, both nursing glasses of water (that Rantarou hadn’t touched the entire time he was here, he noted). Rantarou had passed him the envelope long ago, but Shuuichi hadn’t bothered to touch it.

“You might be wondering why I’m here.” Rantarou paused. “Actually, scratch that. You’re probably wondering why I’m here. Right?”

“Right…”

“I work for a little place called the SCP Foundation. We work to contain anomalous objects like the one you made contact with the other day. You know, that little stone thing?”

Oh, that stone. It was considered anomalous? He just thought the stone possessed some qualities that he hadn’t fully experimented with yet, what with its insistence on sticking to mirrors and changing hues in his hands. It was strange, but nothing different from a mood stone with an extra layer of magnetism.

Shuuichi’s brows wrinkled. “Anomalous? That wasn’t just a normal stone?”

“Nope. Actually one of the more dangerous things we have in containment,” Rantarou said. Even as he finished his sentence, his carefree smile didn’t slip. “My point is, the world’s full of these things. Some of them are harmful, some of them aren’t.”

“How do we know which ones are harmful?”

“I can see why you’re a scientist now. We’ll get there.”

“Is that an insult?”

“No. Be grateful I convinced them to send me and not the guy they were going to send. Kaito’s a great guy, but listening to him rattle on and on about space for hours wasn’t gonna do you any good.”

Shuuichi blinked, not knowing how to respond.

Rantarou cleared his throat. “Anyway, we have three goals at the Foundation. Secure anomalies with the goal of preventing them from falling into the hands of civilians or rival agencies, contain anomalies to prevent their effects from spreading, and protect humanity from anomalies until we can properly understand them enough to make new scientific theories based off them. That’s our mission statement. Secure, contain, protect.”

His eyes fell on Shuuichi, locking him into an intense staring contest. “To fulfill our mission statement, we need scientists to unravel exactly what we’re dealing with. You know, scientists like you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. We’ve been watching you for some time, actually. Just kinda had to wait until the right moment.”

Something bitter stabbed at Shuuichi’s heart. “So you guys were the ones who planted that thing in my lab?”

Rantarou blinked and looked so genuinely confused that Shuuichi felt bad immediately. “What? No. We don’t even know how it got out of containment.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Rantarou chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Well, I suppose you don’t know until you see it for yourself. And you almost did see it for yourself.”

“How so?”

The air chilled as soon as those words left Shuuichi’s mouth. Something about Rantarou’s relaxed demeanor changed despite nothing in his body language suggesting otherwise. The shadow on his face from his hair seemed to grow darker, and it felt like Shuuichi had just ruined something he wasn’t supposed to.

Rantarou hummed to himself, as if he was debating something with himself. He made his decision rather quickly and refocused his gaze on Shuuichi. “You didn’t get a lot of time to really experiment with that stone, but we have. It’s been in containment for years. What did you observe about it?”

Shuuichi’s throat tightened, but his mouth kept moving anyway. “Um, it seemed to stick to mirrors a lot. It turned blue in my hands.”

“Oh, it turned blue in yours?” Rantarou crossed his arms and looked past Shuuichi. “Yeah, mine, too. But trust me when I say there’s a reason it needs to be kept in containment. One you’ll never understand until you personally see that thing punch through five meters of steel to get to a mirror.”

Rantarou seemed like the kind of person who would exaggerate stories to scare newcomers like Shuuichi. He even wore the same carefree smile he had at the beginning of their meeting. But something told Shuuichi that even though Rantarou was genuinely friendly, he kept himself at an emotional distance. Further investigation was required.

“So?” Rantarou said, wrapping his arm behind the chair. “What do you say? Wanna work for us? We’ve got a pretty good salary, one comparable to the one you had working at your lab. We have free coffee if you can get to the break room early enough. We have this program where you can finish your PhD while working with us, too. Lots of sick days off. We don’t need any germs messing with the anomalies in containment, after all.”

With the way Rantarou described the benefits of working for the Foundation, it almost sounded like a normal job. It was similar to his former job, except potentially a hundred times more dangerous. There was no way to be sure this offer wasn’t a scam, but why would the same guy that came into his lab armed be here now in the most casual attire without a care in the world? There was no way someone only affiliated with some sort of military could know his home address and the ramifications being fired had on his occupation.

“And if you refuse,” Rantarou said, opening the envelope and presenting a pill to him. “You’ve gotta take this. It’s an amnestic. You’ll forget this entire situation.”

So  _ that _ was what was in the envelope.

Shuuichi had been too cautious all his life, and look where that had gotten him. Some bullshit out of his control had taken everything he had away from him (okay, maybe it was just his job, but damn it, that job was his life. Science had been his only companion for all his life). What else did he have to lose? His apartment? His life? Neither of those mattered much anymore.

“I’ll take it,” Shuuichi said. He cringed at how wobbly and unsure his voice sounded.

Rantarou grinned and packaged the amnestic back into the envelope. “Cool. I promise we’re not bad people.”

Reassuring as always.

He and waved with that same carefree (now unnerving) smile he had walked in with. “Anyway, the site director should be contacting you soon. I’ll see you later. Peace.”

Rantarou walked out of the apartment, leaving Shuuichi to wonder what he just agreed to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> considered chapter title: shuuichi fails at every social interaction ever

Spam mail was nothing Shuuichi wasn’t already used to. He had already cleared out the majority of it: notices from a gym he never went to, new articles from a news site, notifications from several website he had signed up for but he had forgotten about long ago, the works. But when he was done emptying his spam folder, there was one lone email left, holding his stare like inanimate, digital objects usually don’t.

Honestly, it kind of looked like a virus. He caved into his kindergarten urge to click on everything and, against his better judgement, opened the email.

Shuuichi scanned the contents, careful for any sign of malware. The email seemed to be an advertisement for stained clay pots from a company called… Stained Clay Pots. The images attached detailed what size pots they sold and what colors were available. All the words were written in exciting, bold font. It was as if a child had been given control over the word choice.

Hang on.

Shuuichi zoomed in on the lip of the pot to the bottom right. There was a weird, black logo in the shadow of it. There were two white rings inside it with three arrows pointing inwards.

When Shuuichi clicked on it, he was redirected to a webpage with nothing but gibberish written on it.

Shuuichi rolled his eyes. Binary? Seriously? The easiest code on the internet to crack? Someone in the IT department was about to get their ass fired. He copied the text into an online translator and read:

_ Shuuichi Saihara, _

_ This email will self-destruct in ten minutes. Walk to the building across your apartment complex and fifteen buildings down. Make sure you aren’t being followed. _

Well, that was an ominous message if Shuuichi’s ever seen one.

Was this the contact Rantarou was telling him about? It sure seemed like it with all the secrecy (read: childish scavenger hunt games) behind the message. He should probably get going. Fifteen buildings was a long distance for someone who hadn’t exercised in years to walk.

* * *

Fifteen buildings did not end up being fifteen buildings; it was, more accurately, fifteen buildings and a fuck ton of empty space.

Shuuichi’s feet ached. He shifted his weight back and forth to try helping his feet out, but the dull, buzzing sensation on the soles of his feet refused to stop their attack.

A giant warehouse loomed over him. From his angle, he could only see the entrance, which had a tall fence topped with barbed wire. Two guards stood on either side of the fence. The road leading to the warehouse was riddled with No Trespassing signs.

Uh… did he count as a trespasser? No, right?

Shuuichi inched closer and closer to the guards, holding his breath and hoping they didn’t point a gun at him.

His hopes were dashed when a guard spotted him and turned to him instantly.

“You there!” the guard cried. “What’re you doing?”

_ Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck— _

“U-Um,” Shuuichi’s mind scrambled to form words, but they wouldn’t come.

“What is it, you have no excuse for your degeneracy? Of course it’s pitiful males like you who choose to disgrace grand operations like this.”

Wait, what?

“Degeneracy?” Shuuichi said. His fear was eroding in favor of incredulity. “Pitiful?”

The guard only seemed to become more irate at his repetition. “Are you doubtin—”

“Tenko,” the other guard called. Her voice was calm yet firm enough to stop the other guard in her tracks. “That’s one of the new ones. Let him go.”

“Oh… well, still.” Despite having just yelled at him seconds ago, Tenko opened the gate for him. She almost seemed to be holding her nose up in disdain. “Don’t conduct yourself in such a shameful manner ever again.”

Shuuichi nodded and passed through, still frazzled from everything that had happened to him over the past hour.

Hell of a way to start off his day. He figured he might as well see how weird it got and walked down the path towards the warehouse.

* * *

The entrance was surprisingly easy to get into. It was just a matter of pulling open one of the rusted metal doors and walking into a whole other world that would make a tech enthusiast cry tears of joy.

Such secure doors! High ceilings! Automated everything! Shuuichi’s heart raced just seeing it. He was so excited he almost missed the woman at the front desk raising an eyebrow at him.

Shuuichi cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

The woman only shook her head before fixing a firm, intense stare on him that made his skin crawl. “Welcome to the State Correctional Penitentiary. How may I help you?”

Prison? That made a lot more sense. Though that didn’t necessarily explain how advanced the building was…

“I was called here by email,” Shuuichi said. When the woman squinted at him, he added, “the, uh, Stained Clay Pot one. Clicked on one of the pots and it told me to go here. Is this the wrong location?”

“No, not at all.” The woman stood up, and Shuuichi felt he was in the presence of a queenly, authoritative figure. It was honestly a tad intimidating. “Follow me.”

She led him through a series of doors (all of which opened automatically, Shuuichi noted with glee) until they reached a room at the end of the hall. There was only a wooden table with two chairs across from each other in the room. A fluorescent light shined on them from above. For a facility so advanced, it sure looked like an old-fashioned interrogation room. Even so, Shuuichi took a seat, and the woman took a seat across from him.

“Greetings,” the woman said. “My name is Kirumi, and I’m the director of Site V3.”

Shuuichi’s eyebrows wrinkled. “Um, I thought you were the clerk.”

“And director. And janitor.”

“Oh… that’s a… lot of responsibility.” Yeah. That was smooth talking to someone who would probably end up being his boss. Good job, Shuuichi.

“I live to serve. I’m an underling in terms of administration. I report to the 0-5 Council, then they report to the Administrator. It’s a streamlined process.” She cleared her throat. “I assume Rantarou has explained our mission statement to you, am I correct?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Then I will give you more information about your job. Take a look at this folder.” She passed a manila folder to him with a few sheets of paper inside.

Shuuichi had no clue where she got the document if she wasn’t carrying anything when they stepped inside, but he figured this wasn’t his time to ask questions. He opened the folder. The first sheet of paper was a job description for the role of… detective?

“The term detective for the job is a tad outdated, but that’s essentially what your job will be,” Kirumi said, “You will be an agent for us. Exactly what kind of agent you will be depends on where we see you performing best, but for the first year of your job, you will be used for a variety of tasks. You may have to interact with SCPs, or skips as we generally call them.”

Shuuichi frowned. “But I’m a scientist. I’ve never done any detective work before. I mean, my uncle was one, but I never really paid all that much attention to it…”

“Are you unhappy with that role?”

Shuuichi looked down at the job requirements. Sharp eye? His vision was fully intact, if that’s what they wanted. Physical fitness? That was a hell no. Eye for suspicious activity? Sure, if apprehending that group of college interns plagiarizing his articles counted. The salary?

Okay. Woah. Whoo. Wow. That was, um…

Shuuichi closed the folder. “I guess not, but I’ll probably disappoint you guys.”

“You’ll learn.” Kirumi’s eyes darted to her watch. “You have an agent orientation to attend. Your first point of order is to find your way to it yourself. You have an hour.”

These people were seriously overestimating what Shuuichi could do.

Shuuichi passed the folder back to her and stood up. He turned back towards the door. “Um, does my time start now or—”

She wasn’t there when he turned back.

* * *

Wow. The SCP Foundation must really enjoy scavenger hunts, because they sure used a lot of them.

Shuuichi looked to his right. A scientist passed by him without so much as a glance towards him and used an orange keycard to enter a door. The door shut behind them. When Shuuichi raised his palm to the sensor, it flashed red until he retracted his hand.

Okay. That wasn’t the right direction. Neither was the hallway ahead of him, as two scientists holding orange keycards were conversing. 

Shuuichi turned left and continued walking.

* * *

This was doing nothing for his aching feet. Has it been an hour yet? Can he give up?

Okay, he knew he wasn’t going to  _ give up, _ but he sure felt like it.

Let’s see. The door ahead of him required a keycard, so that direction was out. But when he fell silent, there was a distant roaring to his left.

Yeah. Right. Definitely right.

Shuuichi turned to the right and continued walking.

* * *

This was just getting frustrating now.

Shuuichi had come to yet another set of doors. And again, he had to play the same game of “Which door looks the least threatening?”. It was a good game at first, but it was just getting old now.

Before he could make a move, a short scientist carrying a clipboard emerged from the door in front of him. He flashed Shuuichi a smile before continuing on his way.

Huh. He didn’t have a keycard.

Shuuichi walked forward, and true to his suspicions, the door opened, revealing…

… the exact same scientist he had just run into before.

The scientist didn’t seem fazed at almost bumping into another person. Instead, he just gave him the same smile and continued.

Was that a ghost?

Shuuichi turned and watched him disappear down the hall.

_ I mean… I’ve seen weirder shit. _

So Shuuichi turned and kept walking.

* * *

Finally,  _ finally,  _ Shuuichi had made it to the orientation room. He was joined by a crowd of other people, though they seemed to mostly be keeping to themselves, sitting quietly in the chairs set up in rows before a raised podium. Their lecturer wasn’t here yet, it seemed. Only one person was at least attempting to make conversation, and he was… the same strange scientist Shuuichi had encountered earlier. Only he was in casual wear like the rest of them, and he had dropped the glasses he wore in his scientist outfit.

And it turned out the only empty seat was next to him. Wonderful.

Shuuichi took a seat and prayed the man wouldn’t notice him, but life really, really, extraordinarily hated him.

The man turned to him with a grin and wild eyes. “You’re new, too, right? Right? You just have that newbie look about you.”

Insulted twice in one day. Wonderful.

“Newbie look?” Shuuichi said. “You just said you’re new here, too.”

“I don’t know, am I?”

“Was that a lie or something?”

“I don’t know, was it?”

God, Shuuichi was getting a headache. Thankfully, the lecturer had finally arrived and had the attention of everyone in the room.

“Everyone, sit your asses down and shut the fuck up,” the lecturer shouted, despite having a microphone. “I’m Jenny fucking Lee, and I’m the unlucky bastard that drew the short stick to be with you fuckers today.”

God. Why was everyone in this facility so fucking weird?

The lecturer pointed at the headache in the room. “You! Bitchflakes! Spit it out already!”

The man stood up on his chair with a weirdly smug grin for someone who had just been called Bitchflakes. He pointed out several members of the audience with a finger. “Guy in the red jacket in the fifth row, he’s GOC. Woman in the black dress in the first row followed the guy in the trenchcoat in the back row. And no, none of you fooled the clerk. We just needed to prove a point to the newbies. Take ‘em out, Maki Roll!”

“Don’t call me that,” a guard murmured before reloading her gun. She pointed it at them and walked the intruders out with several other guards. The door to the orientation room shut behind them.

“Now that that’s done,” the lecturer said, “I’m Miu. Not Jenny fucking Lee. Though I do want Fucking as my middle name, because that’s fucking badass.” She trailed off in contemplative silence but continued upon being nudged by a guard. “Anyway, I’m not even your lecturer today. The poor fucker that has to do that is—”

“Me!” The man jumped off his chair and rushed to the podium.

Whatever glee was on her face immediately dropped. “Stop stealing my thunder, you little shit!”

“Then say it faster, you stupid bitch!”

“I hate you.”

“I hate you more.”

Shuuichi sighed and picked up the yellow keycard at his feet. It had his name and job written on it, as well as the number of years he’s been in service (being zero). When he looked back up, Miu was storming off the podium, and the man gladly took her place.

“Hey, potential victims—I mean, fellow agents,” the man said with an unfaltering, unnerving smile. “I’m Kokichi. You’re not classified to know my last name. I’m not exactly an agent, but I am a terrific liar. And you’re gonna be doing  _ a lot _ of that, whether it’s to your families about what exactly your job is or if you end up on national news trying to clean up someone else’s mess. You’re also gonna be doing a lot of the former.”

Shuuichi looked around. The people around him shifted in their seats, looking anywhere other than Kokichi. But on the other hand, those hanging out near the edges of the crowd didn’t seem surprised at all. Shuuichi guessed they were the hardened veterans of the agent world.

Kokichi’s grin only grew wider at their discomfort. “As agents, you will lie a lot. Some of you will be assigned to lie to the public about what exactly we do here. Spoiler alert: we aren't actually a prison. Another batch of you will lie to other undercover agents about who you are. But most importantly, all of you will lie to yourselves—”

“Hey, can you just tell us what our job is?” a particularly disgruntled man in the audience shouted.

Kokichi’s sinister grin dropped into a—dare Shuuichi say it—cute pout. “Well, if you wanna be all boring like that, then you can just go ahead and get out.”

Contrary to his words, Kokichi spent the next hour detailing every excruciating detail about the job. There were some agents who would be focused on the gathering information side of things, and there were some agents who would be focused on actual containment of an SCP. From the looks of it, Shuuichi would be doing both.

Oh, and it turned out Kokichi was the one who designed all the stupid Where’s Waldo-esque puzzle games the Foundation set up. Thanks.

All agents were dismissed at the end of the meeting. They were given a specific email and browser to use it on and told to check their emails for their assignment. Most agents would be relocated. Only a few would stay in this general area.

So Shuuichi returned home with a heavy heart, preparing himself for the worst and for sore feet.

* * *

_ Agent Saihara,  
_ _ You will stay at Site V3. Your main studies will be under Dr. Kokichi [REDACTED], though you will be interacting with much of the staff here. Welcome to the Foundation. _

_ Sincerely,  
_ _ Kirumi  
_ _ Director of Site V3 _

Huh. So Kokichi really wasn’t joking about nobody being classified to know his last name.

That was the last thought Shuuichi had before passing out for the night. 

What a weird day.

* * *

So. Shuuichi was an agent for one of the top secret organizations in the world despite having no prior experience in intelligence-gathering or anything of the sort. That happened in… less than a week.

Holy shit.

Shuuichi shot up in bed at three in the morning and screamed into his hands.

He could deal with the noise complaints later. For now, what the fuck?


	3. Chapter 3

It turned out being a secret agent for an even more secretive organization was more boring than Shuuichi thought it’d be.

“Okay, so you’re just gonna be in charge of keeping records for the first month,” Kokichi said, spinning in the wheely chair behind his desk. He had a lollipop in his hands for god knows what reason. “Basically, we want to make sure you’re actually literate. Who knows? You could’ve falsified your entire life up to this point. For all we know, your name is Kaito and you seriously don’t know how to follow basic instructions.”

“Um…”

“That was a lie. It’s because you’re not cleared to know a lot of stuff. The Kaito thing isn’t a lie, though. Dumb bitch.”

Shuuichi blinked.

“I’m not even telling the truth about the keeping records part. You’re basically gonna be a glorified assistant for the researchers for a while before we can trust you with some actual field work.” Kokichi gave him a grin and handed him a packet of papers. “Have fun! Now, get out of my office.”

Okay. Well. What the hell?

Shuuichi stumbled out of Kokichi’s office. He slammed the door shut behind him and began filing through the papers (pointedly ignoring the “nishishi” laugh).

SCP-012 - A Bad Composition. Object class: Euclid.  _ SCP-012 is to be kept in a darkened room at all times. If the object is exposed to light or seen by personnel using a light frequency other than infrared, remove personnel for mental health screening and immediate physical. Object is to be encased in an iron-shielded box, suspended from the ceiling with a minimum clearance of 2.5 m (8 ft) from the floor, walls, and any openings. _

Shuuichi furrowed his eyebrows and looked through the packet again, but to no avail. There was no description of whatever SCP-012 was. But he was given the researcher’s name and room number, which would be great if he could actually navigate the building.

Shuuichi sighed and looked up at the signs, ready to play another game of ring-around-the-facility.

* * *

_ Fucking finally. _

It took him a little more than two hundred years to get to where SCP-012 was contained, but Shuuichi had made it. He should really ask for a map of the facility at some point.

Shuuichi entered the containment cell, only to be met with a room devoid of human life. There was a connecting door to where a music composition could be seen through a large window. A piano was set against that window with stacks of frenzied writing on it in the room Shuuichi was in. There was a computer and couch in the corner, but neither seemed well-worn. Instead, there were bookcases full of what seemed to be music compositions.

He walked forward and squinted through the window at the composition. There were red splatters on the concrete floor. It matched the color of the notes on the composition, now that he had a closer view.

Was… Was that blood on the floor?

More and more questions flooded his mind. Shuuichi frowned and walked towards the connecting door.

“Stop!”

Shuuichi froze with his hand still hovering over the button that would open the door. He turned around, only to see a blonde woman in a lab coat staring at him with wide eyes.

“You really don’t wanna do that,” she said. Her shoulders relaxed when Shuuichi’s hand moved away from the button. “I mean, the door’s locked. I’m pretty much the only person who has access to it, but still. You should get used to not touching everything you see.”

“Oh, uh… sorry.”

“It’s cool.” She set a new stack of compositions on the bookshelf. “You’re Agent Shuuichi, right?”

Agent? That sounded way too important for what he was supposed to be doing.

Shuuichi fiddled with his hat, suddenly much too self-conscious of the ketchup stain on his shirt. “I guess you could say that, but I’m really just here to be an assistant.”

The woman seemed to take it in stride and offered him a hand and a smile. “Well, nice to meet you! I’m Dr. Kaede, the primary researcher for SCP-012 and other music related SCPs. Just refer to me by my name. You won’t be seeing me a lot as an agent, but let’s just do some good work together, okay?”

Shuuichi took the hand, noting its warmth. Appropriate for the only person who wasn't completely cold to him. “Well… okay.”

Kaede led him over to the couch and held her hand out for the file. She took out the packet inside and said, “I should probably teach you how to read these things. You’re gonna be seeing a lot of them.” She looked up. “You can sit down, you know.”

“O-Oh, sorry.” Shuuichi sat down next to her and internally berated himself. He needed to get out of this social funk (though that wasn’t too easy considering he had never been all that sociable even when he had a stable research career).

She pointed at the top of the page. “Item number is pretty self-explanatory. We organize SCPs into numbers so we know exactly which ones we’re talking about. Get ready to memorize a lot of these numbers.” Her finger moved down. “We classify SCPs using object classes. They’re ranked based on how easy they are to contain. We like to explain this using the box metaphor. Safe means you could lock it in a box and pretty much know it'll stay in the box. Euclid, like this one, means you can put it in a box, but you won't be entirely sure what happens in the box. Keter means it can and will escape the box. Does that make sense?"

Maybe Shuuichi had put too little value on his life when he joined this thing. "How dangerous are the Keter class objects?"

"Depends. Object classifications have nothing to do with danger level. That's important to remember." Her finger moved further down the page. "These are the containment procedures. Also self-explanatory. There's usually a description of what the SCP is and a few incident logs or reports, but I see you're not cleared to know it. They just redacted all the information."

Shuuichi figured he should've seen it coming, but he couldn't help but feel a bit hurt at that. "So clearance level two only gets you so far?"

Kaede furrowed her brows in confusion for a second before her smile dropped. "That yellow keycard on your belt, that's a level one clearance. Usually given to people in clerical, logistics, or janitorial positions. I'm pretty sure Dr. Kokichi lied to you."

"He lies a lot, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. You get used to it."

The two sat in silence for a long moment before Kaede leaped up from the seat and returned the file to him.

"Well, no use sitting around, is there?" Kaede said. "Let's get some work done." She held her hand out.

Shuuichi took the hand. Somehow, he felt more driven than he had in the past month just with the contact. Maybe it had to do with her naturally bright personality or just that she happened to be the first person to actually be genuinely nice to him, but whatever. He was gonna do some damn fine work.

* * *

"Found anything?"

The optimism in Kaede's voice was a welcome departure from the negativity in Shuuichi's head that told him to give up after every lead that led to nothing. Sure, he took a music appreciation class in college, but that had been, what, ten years ago? He had no clue what the first note of the sheet music he was looking at even said. How was he supposed to match sheet music?

Shuuichi shook his head, his heart falling when Kaede's smile dropped.

"It's okay," Kaede said with a shrug. "I have a PhD in music, yet I haven't been able to find anything yet. You were a scientist, right?"

That fact did help him feel a little less ashamed. "Yeah. Worked in a lab with a bunch of other people."

"What'd you study?"

"Does it matter? It's all in the past now anyway."

"Well, I think the past matters quite a bit," Kaede said. She turned back to the piano and laid her fingers in position for the first chord. "Take a listen to this."

When she pressed down on the keys, the disagreeable cacophony of sound compelled Shuuichi to wince. Ugh, the sound was just disgusting in every way. Even his untrained ear could pick out that nothing was quite right with the sound. Kaede's face, however, revealed nothing as she continued playing.

Kaede turned back to him once she was finished and laughed at the expression on his face. "I know, right? It doesn't make any sense at all. That's what's written on SCP-012. And as, uh…  _ unharmonic _ as it is, the entire piece is speculated to be a link to the past."

"A link to the past?"

Something flickered in Kaede's eyes, and she raised her palms as if reaching out to something that wasn't there.  _ "Mount Golgotha, _ " she breathed. "The piece is called  _ On Mount Golgotha, _ which is the only lead we have so far. Christians say it's where Jesus was crucified. Artists say it’s their greatest inspiration. I say it's the beginning of something special."

"What would that be?"

"Well, I haven't figured it out yet. But I can see it." Her voice dropped, and her fingers formed a frame. "Maybe it's the combination of all the different notes in music recorded throughout history. Surely it can't be the beginning of music, but maybe it can be the beginning of the end, when every sound mixes together into something unrecognizable. What do you think?"

Shuuichi blinked, then dug his mind for anything that could make sense. "I'm not sure, but if it has the title of a location important to religion, it was probably composed there at some point after Jesus's crucifixion."

"Well, I don't know. Nobody knows. The paper’s too fragile to carbon date the thing, so all our speculations just… have to be speculations." Kaede dropped her hands. A smile returned to her face. "That was a little heavy. Let's get lunch!"

"Uh… yeah, sure."

"Has anyone given you a map yet? Of course no one has, your supervisor is Dr. Kokichi. Here, let me give you one. Oh, don't tell me no one's given you the bonus card at our front organizations yet. You get a discount at all of them if you present the card." Kaede continued to ramble about all the things no one had told Shuuichi while turning off the lights and securing the lab. She gestured for Shuuichi to come out the lab and locked it behind her.

Shuuichi followed as she walked down the halls. She walked with such confidence, holding her head up high and waving at every person that came their way. Would Shuuichi ever become like that? Able to walk down the halls of this facility like it was his home? To greet someone without his hat shielding his eyes?

It didn't matter, in any case. For now, he decided Kaede was his first friend in the facility, and SCP-012 was his first object of study. 

Hopefully both would be first of many.

* * *

The size of the cafeteria was much smaller than Shuuichi anticipated would be needed for a facility this large. There were five lines serving different types of food, though many had brought their own lunches from home. The tables and chairs seemed eerily similar to those found in Shuuichi's high school (Yuck. Go away, memories). Security guards were stationed at every door. That probably fed into the tensed shoulders and quiet disposition most people had in this facility.

After Kaede led him through a lunch line, she pointed towards a table with two people. “Oh, those are my friends! Let me introduce you to them.”

Before Shuuichi could protest (though he doubted he could actually muster up the courage to), Kaede plopped herself down at the table and was already pulling on Shuuichi’s sleeve.

“Hey, this is Shuuichi, my new assistant,” Kaede said. “He was recruited as an agent just recently.”

The first to greet him was a man with spiky hair and the most inconvenient method of wearing a jacket over his lab uniform. He held his fist out for a fistbump that was promptly returned. “‘Sup! I’m Dr. Kaito, Luminary of the Stars.”

“Literally no one calls you that,” said the other woman at the table.

“SCP-3740 does.”

“The most gullible SCP we have in containment? Sure.”

As the two continued bickering, Shuuichi’s focus remained on Kaito. He swore he heard that name before… 

“Oh,” Shuuichi said, drawing their attention. “Are you the Kaito that Kokichi said couldn’t follow basic directions?”

Kaito’s body stiffened, and the woman looked more pleased than her face seemed capable of seeming. Kaede laughed but stifled it with a hand.

“That piece of shit!” Kaito yelled, rocketing up from his seat with a clenched fist raised. “He’s the one that can’t follow directions! He couldn’t follow directions for—”

“They’re brothers,” Kaede said.

Kaito sighed and sat back down. Nobody had seemed to pay him much mind, which was alarming. “Yeah, sadly.”

“A little hard to believe sometimes,” the woman said. Her red eyes were fixed on Shuuichi, making his skin prickle. “I’m Maki. I’m a security guard. That’s all you need to know about me.”

Shuuichi himself had never been too friendly with his coworkers in the past. He could respect that. He nodded, and the two tuned back into the conversation Kaede and Kaito were having about their research.

Even if Shuuichi couldn’t quite understand what was going on (as tends to be the result when a music expert and an astrophysicist dominate the conversation), the discussion was still casual, even friendly. It was a steep departure from the cold, clinical treatment that the staff extended to other staff members, but it was a welcome one that Shuuichi didn’t even know he longed for.

At the end of the discussion, Kaede stood up from the table with her trash balled up in her hand. “I guess I should get going. Got a lot more research to do before I close up the lab. Let’s go, Shuuichi.”

Shuuichi stood as well, fumbling to get his legs out from underneath the table. He folded a paper bag in half and waved a goodbye to Maki and Kaito, one shrugging while the other waved back enthusiastically. He tossed the paper bag into a recycling bin before following Kaede out.

“Hey, you’re actually walking next to me,” Kaede said with a smile.

Well, he supposed he was.

* * *

That was Shuuichi’s routine for the next year. He would nod to Maki to let him through the front gates of the facility (and though Tenko still shouted at him, her demeaning insults had turned into aggressive reminders to take care of himself), give Kirumi a polite greeting as he passed her, research with Kaede for a couple hours, have lunch with his friends (friends!), then return to researching until Kaede closed her lab. Sometimes, he would even get dinner with his coworkers after work, something he had only ever observed happening to other people and never experienced.

“So, here’s the deal,” Kokichi said, spinning in his chair.

Shuuichi shifted uncomfortably in his seat and held up his palm in polite refusal when Kokichi offered him a lollipop. Back in the office of hell, he was.

“You’ve been here a real long time now. You have three options.” Kokichi held up a finger for each option while speaking around a grape flavored lollipop in his mouth. “You can either leave with the feds and work for the government, be released from this type of work in general and have your memories erased, or—and this is the fun one—you can sign a contract with us and continue working with a level two clearance card.” He shrugged. “Or I guess you could jump out the window. Or be fed to one of the Keters. Really, you have a lot more options.”

Well, that was a no-brainer.

Shuuichi picked up a purple, glittery gel pen from Kokichi’s desk and locked eyes with him. “Where’s the contract?”

“Excited, aren’t we? Keep in mind I won’t be your supervisor anymore. That job’s going to Senior Agent Korekiyo, who reports to Mommy Kirumi, who reports to a special council of people called the O5s, who report to the Administrator. You probably won’t need to worry about those last two, though.”

_ You say that like it’s a downside, _ Shuuichi thought. Instead, he said, “That doesn’t deter me.”

Kokichi scoffed and rolled his eyes but passed over the contract nonetheless. “Whatever. You’ll miss me. They all do.”

_ I’ve literally talked to you, like, three times. _ But whatever. Shuuichi scanned the contents to make sure he wasn’t agreeing to being kidnapped (though one of the clauses did say the Foundation wasn’t responsible in the event he is) before signing his name at the bottom of the contract.

Kokichi took the contract and pen and signed his own name at the bottom as well on a different line. He filed it away before raising his gaze back up to Shuuichi and extending a hand. “Welcome to the Foundation, Agent Shuuichi.”

Shuuichi smiled and shook the hand.

The smile dropped when something honked and Shuuichi felt the cool touch of the button attached to Kokichi’s hand.

“Nishishi! I can’t believe that actually worked!” Kokichi laughed, sliding back into his chair so much only the top of his head was visible. He passed a dark yellow keycard to him and held his hand out, to which Shuuichi handed over his light yellow keycard. “But let me tell you something.”

Shuuichi instinctively leaned away as Kokichi’s eyes grew more intense.

The usual mischievous grin on Kokichi’s face was gone now, replaced with an unnervingly blank stare. His voice dropped down to just above a whisper. “If you see someone doing anything suspicious or something you know is wrong, you go to me. Not to Dr. Kaede. Not to Agent Korekiyo. Not even to Director Kirumi. But  _ me. _ Don’t shy away from lies to get what information you need to while keeping yourself safe. Do you promise me that, Agent?”

The intensity of the question felt like an anchor on him. Shuuichi nodded with a gulp. “Yes. I promise.”

“Then get out of my office.” Kokichi’s lips curved back up into his usual grin, and he leaned back in his chair. “I have important things to do, like stealing candy. And making babies cry. And stealing candy from babies.”

Agent Shuuichi walked out of the office, shaking his head in a very agent-like way with a keycard meant for agents in his pocket.

_ Agent. _

He could get used to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SCP-012: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-012  
> SCP-3740: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3740


	4. Chapter 4

As it turned out, Agent Korekiyo was probably the most imposing figure Shuuichi had met.

Korekiyo was by no means a burly man, but there was an air about him that made Shuuichi shudder. There was a sense of doom he carried that Shuuichi couldn’t shake, especially now that they were sitting in his office. Even the way he talked was foreboding and ominous, as if he knew something they didn’t.

“You may refer to me as Senior Agent Korekiyo Shinguuji,” Korekiyo said through his face mask, which somehow didn’t muffle his voice. Maybe an anomalous face mask? “My specialty is in anthropology. It’s in the customs, legends, folk tales, songs, and much more. Anthropology sheds light on traditions and customs such as these through rigorous analysis. It is a study that examines the thought behind culture, faith, and customs.”

Shuuichi didn’t ask, but okay.

Wait.

“You’re… the only person who’s told their last name to me so far,” Shuuichi said, frowning.

Korekiyo’s eyes crinkled at that. “Intriguing, is it not? Such a fascinating culture of secrecy we have here at the Foundation. I, as an observer, choose not to participate in it.”

Secrecy. That was the big key word around the entire organization, wasn’t it?

Nevertheless, it was hard to talk to someone who talked like this, especially since this person was technically his boss. He remained silent.

“Shall we move onto the actual topic?”

“Yes.”

Korekiyo cleared his throat. “I’ve been told that you’ve been conducting excellent work under Dr. Kaede for SCP-012, yes?”

Ah, it was embarrassing to be referred to like that. Shuuichi fought the blush rising to his face and answered, “I guess so.”

"Your first mission as an agent will be related to your research." Korekiyo paused to hand him a packet of files. "You will be visiting Mount Golgotha with another senior agent. Your objective is to search for more information on SCP-012. The senior agent with you will direct you further. Good luck, agent."

Shuuichi glanced down at the papers, frowned, then looked back up to Korekiyo, only to find he had disappeared.

Yup. Same shit as always.

Shuuichi opened the file. It was the same document with SCP-012's containment procedures, only without all the redactions. The new part was as follows:

_ Description: SCP-012 was retrieved by Archaeologist K.M. Sandoval during the excavation of a northern Italian tomb destroyed in a recent storm. The object, a piece of handwritten musical score entitled "On Mount Golgotha", part of a larger set of sheet music, appears to be incomplete. The red/black ink, first thought to be some form of berry or natural dye ink, was later found to be human blood from multiple subjects. The first personnel to locate the sheet (Site 19 Special Salvage) had two (2) members descend into insanity, attempting to use their own blood to finish the composition, ultimately resulting in massive blood loss and internal trauma. _

_ Following initial investigations, multiple test subjects were allowed access to the score. In every case, the subjects mutilated themselves in order to use their own blood to finish the piece, resulting in subsequent symptoms of psychosis and massive trauma. Those subjects who managed to finish a section of the piece immediately committed suicide, declaring the piece to be "impossible to complete". Attempts to perform the music have resulted in a disagreeable cacophony, with each instrumental part having no correlation or harmony with the other instruments. _

Shuuichi's blood ran cold.

That was what he’d been working with for a year? How close had he been to SCP-012? On that first day when Kaede had stopped him from entering its chambers—what if she hadn't stopped him? Kaede had insisted back then that the door was only able to be unlocked by her, but logical explanation did little to solve his worries. 

But that was why it was locked up, wasn't it? So it would stay far, far away from humanity? Shuuichi had willingly signed up for this—to die in the dark so others could live in the light. That was the motto he bound himself to.

With a heavy hand, Shuuichi turned the page.

The next page was a photocopied request in Kaede's handwriting asking for further research to be conducted on SCP-012 from years prior. Judging by the state of the project now, permission was granted.

Then it got weird.

The next page was a heavily censored biography of Rantarou. His last name was redacted, as well as the section about his past and history with the Foundation. Shuuichi could only make out that he was a senior field agent before surviving some sort of massive containment breach at another site and being recruited to an MTF team. Really, the only intact part of the article was the section relevant to SCP-012, where it listed him as one of the staff responsible for originally containing it. His spouse is listed as… Dr. Kaede at site V3? Shuuichi supposed he could’ve seen it coming. That was probably why Rantarou was guiding him on this entire mission in the first place. And—

_ Containment breach? _

Holy shit. How many containment breaches needed to happen before the Foundation just didn’t bother covering it up from a clearance two agent?

Shuuichi flipped the page before the terror could sink in.

It was just a picture of Kokichi at a computer, smiling cheekily at the camera. The cursor on the screen hovered over a news article about some sort of massive landslide that occurred (or… didn’t occur?). It was captioned “[REDACTED] as a disinformation agent in his first year with the Foundation.” 

Yeah, he was fairly sure Kokichi was just trying to fuck with him. Or maybe that was his way of announcing that he would be going on the mission with Rantarou and Shuuichi. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was both.

But why would Kokichi be going on the mission with them? Even if he had experience as a disinformation agent, wouldn’t that mean he would be better off at the Foundation from afar?

Actually, what did Kokichi even do in the first place? He was in charge of the agent orientation and designing that series of annoying puzzles, but his role seemed to extend much farther than that judging by how respected he was within the site.

You know what? Just… he’ll figure it out later.

Shuuichi shut the file, only to have his phone blow up with texts from Kaede announcing the same thing Korekiyo just told him.

* * *

_ To: Agent Shuuichi (sshuuichi@scp.fo)  
_ _ From: Commander Rantarou (arantarou@mtf.scp.fo)  
_ _ Subject: SCP-012 Mission _

_ Hey, _

_ Some construction site found a piece of SCP-012. Agents in an Italian site nearby confirmed it, but it doesn’t have any anomalous effects we should be aware of. Just made the construction guys really pissed off. Dr. Kokichi’s coming along to bug another facility about something. He didn’t really tell me what. We’re going by helicopter, so be prepared for a bumpy ride. _

* * *

Ha. “Bumpy ride.” As if that actually captured the terror Shuuichi would feel on that ride.

There was no amount of creepiness on an isolated mountain that would keep Shuuichi from jumping offboard after a long,  _ long _ ride of bullshit. He patted down his pockets before surging ahead of the other two and leaping out of the helicopter. That was a decision he would later come to regret, as he fell right on his face.

Ah, right. The world hated him.

Kokichi burst out laughing and Rantarou chuckled at him, the two carefully stepping off the helicopter themselves. The pilot waited for them to get a sizable distance away from the helicopter before taking off.

The helicopter slowly disappeared into the sky. Something at Shuuichi clawed for him to get back on, to get back to where he felt most comfortable. A foreign country where he didn’t know the language was not it.

“Well, this is where we part ways,” Kokichi said, hauling a backpack over his shoulder. He burst into tears and clung to Rantarou’s arm. “Goodbye, my beloved Rantarou! Fate has torn us apart once again.”

“You were easier to handle when you acted like a baby during these things, you know.”

Kokichi immediately dropped the act and Rantarou’s arm. “Yeah, I know. See you later, losers.” With that, he began walking in the direction opposite to where the map indicated they should be going and disappeared.

“Is he always like this?” Shuuichi asked.

“Nope. Just most of the time.” Rantarou pulled out the map himself, took one look at it, and crumpled it into a ball. “This is pretty useless. I know where the construction site is. What do you know, it’s right near Golgotha. Follow me, it’s about a five hour hike from here.”

Shuuichi nodded but folded the map and put it into his back pocket. He wasn’t sure he quite trusted Rantarou’s sense of direction yet.

The two started their descent down the mountain, the desperate claws for familiarity dying with every step.

* * *

An hour of chilling airs and bland conversation passed before something interesting finally happened.

“Hey, scientist,” Rantarou called. He bent down to pick up a stone and handed it to Shuuichi. “You ever seen something like this before?”

Shuuichi looked down at the stone. It was a ragged, gray stone with a touch of red paint at the top. Even though it was by all means a seemingly normal stone, a year at the Foundation told him this stone was only seconds away from doing some weird shit. He shook his head to answer Rantarou’s question.

“It’s a rock from a northern Italian tomb. Not sure if it’s the same one K.M. Sandoval found SCP-012 in, but it sure is a rock from a tomb here.”

“How can you tell?”

Rantarou chuckled and took the rock back. “Agent’s secret. I worked with Agent Shinguuji a lot. We’re friends, you know. We go out for drinks sometimes, not to drink but to people-watch. You strike me as someone who’d enjoy that, too. Am I right?”

Shuuichi sighed. Was he really that easy to read?

“Yeah, you’re right,” Shuuichi mumbled. “But that being an agent’s secret doesn’t make sense. You were on SCP-012’s initial containment team, of course you’d know that.”

Instead of laughing and waving off a joke like Shuuichi expected him to, Rantarou stilled and looked away with a sigh and crossed arms. “Is that what it says on my biography page now?”

“Uh… yeah?”

“Can I see it for a sec? If you still have it at all.”

Shuuichi dug through his bag before taking out the page and handing it to him. Shuuichi’s blood ran colder and colder as Rantarou silently read the page.

Finally, Rantarou’s brow unfurrowed and he sighed again, a smile returning to his face. “At least the unredacted stuff is mostly true. I was a field agent turned MTF commander of Nu-13 ‘Survivors.’ Kaede is indeed my spouse. But…”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, you know. I’m probably not cleared to know it.”

“No, no, I don’t give a shit about that. I’m my story to tell, not the Foundation’s to cover up.” Rantarou flipped the page, then flipped it back upon finding it covered in black blocks. “I have no memory of containing SCP-012. I don’t even remembering being at Site 19, nor being part of its Special Salvage. Yeah, I was in the middle of a bad containment breach, but that wasn’t it. I was at Site 2 before I got moved to V3.”

“What about the containment breach?”

“Don’t remember that either. But that was my own choice. Took an amnestic and moved on with my life. The only thing I remember about it is that it was bad and I took an amnestic to remove the memories in the first place.” Rantarou chuckled and folded up the paper. “Actually, you know what’s the funniest thing about all this?”

That laugh didn’t mean anything good. Shuuichi gestured for him to continue despite his skin prickling.

Rantarou crumpled the paper into a ball and handed it back to him, avoiding his eyes. “I didn’t write this. I don’t know who wrote this. No one knows who writes the biographies. Like, here.” He opened his own bag and handed Shuuichi a sheet of paper.

It was… Shuuichi’s own biography. Shuuichi sure as hell didn’t write it; he didn’t even know it existed. But all the information on it was mostly accurate, except his exact age and history.

Shuuichi looked up and handed it back. “It’s all pretty much accurate. I didn’t even know these existed.”

“That’s my concern, too. The only people who have such sensitive information are Director Kirumi and Kokichi, but neither of them would just abuse it like that. Well, maybe Kokichi, but…”

“What does Kokichi do, actually?”

“No clue. I was inducted with him as an agent, and that’s all I know.” Rantarou shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. The facility keeps running, the world keeps turning, all that jazz. Let’s keep going.”

Shuuichi gulped and shelved his questions for another day.

* * *

“You really want me to wear  _ that?” _

“Wear it, Agent. It’ll save you one day.”

“Even if today’s not that day?”

“Yup.”

* * *

The construction site was busy and heavy with the fear of being run over by a tractor (or maybe that was just Shuuichi). Machines dug soil out of the giant hole in the ground, tossing the soil into a container that was lifted up occasionally for transfer. Thankfully, the area was deserted save for the actual construction crew. One person carried a clipboard and shouted commands above the noise.

“Is that the guy we have to talk to?” Shuuichi asked. He winced when a particularly rough string of wind smacked him and almost smacked the hard hat off him. His lanyard clattered against the key ring attached to a belt buckle on his jeans. He wasn’t used to having to dress in such… inconvenient clothing (At least, for a scientist. He imagined it was probably convenient for construction workers).

Rantarou had it worse with a neon orange safety vest wrapped around him, but he didn't seem too uncomfortable with his disguise. "I'd bet it is," he answered. He fixed a polite smile on his face. "Follow me."

Shuuichi trailed Rantarou as he approached the construction worker. The worker turned around to them.

Rantarou opened his mouth and started speaking the quickest Italian Shuuichi had ever heard.

Shuuichi nodded along like he understood a word of what he just said. He stepped back a bit when Rantarou's hand gesture almost knocked his lanyard aside.

The construction worker nodded along as well, though he seemed to actually understand what was being said. After Rantarou was done with his barrage of speech, he furrowed his eyebrows and reached into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled sheet of old paper and handing it to Rantarou. He explained something, then turned back to the hole in the ground after Rantarou thanked him.

Rantarou placed the paper carefully in a manila folder before patting Shuuichi on the shoulder as they walked away and laughed. "You don't know a single word of Italian, do you?"

Shuuichi's face reddened, and he shook his head.

"I literally studied language in university. If I didn’t pick up a language or two, I shouldn’t have graduated.” Then he hesitated, his lips pursed and shoulders tensed.

“Is there something you need to say?” Shuuichi asked.

“Actually,” Rantarou said with a suddenly relaxed demeanor, “I think I’ll just save it for another day. Let’s go back to the site now. We can look at it on the ride back.”

Shuuichi stared forlornly up the mountain they had just come down from, his feet pulsing from overuse. He groaned while Rantarou laughed.

What a wonderful time to be an agent.

* * *

Thankfully, someone with better sense picked their pilot for the return trip home. Shuuichi was finally able to ride a long,  _ long _ helicopter ride without fearing for his safety. But probably fearing for someone else’s safety…

“Should we really leave Dr. Kokichi behind like that?” Shuuichi asked, stumbling to get into the helicopter.

Rantarou scoffed and laughed while plopping himself down on one of the seats and rolling his ankle. It seemed Shuuichi’s feet weren’t the only pair who took a beating. “I wouldn’t be too scared for his health. The guy literally lived off grape Panta when we were inducted together. He’s still alive and kicking. Anyway…” He took the sheet of music out of the manila folder and presented it to Shuuichi.

It was a sheet of old, faded paper with the title “On Mount Golgotha” written messily on it with blood. The border was neat and ornate, suspicious for something Shuuichi suspected was written in blood with a finger. The space for the composer’s name was left blank. On the back was a paragraph of message centered on the page in a text that looked similar to Latin.

Just gazing at it made Shuuichi’s nose wrinkle in some sort of contempt for the piece he had never felt before. After all, why would he? He wasn’t a musician; it wasn’t offensive to him by any means. But… he hated it. God, he wanted to throw that cover page off the damn helicopter. It wasn’t worth the dirt sticking to the bottom of his shoes.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Rantarou said. He carefully pried Shuuichi’s fingers off the page and placed the paper back into the manila folder.

Calmness washed over Shuuichi when the page went back in the folder. Then the piece became just a piece.

Shuuichi blinked. He placed his hands on his lap from midair, suddenly sheepish of every movement he made. “Um… sorry. Did something happen to me?”

Rantarou didn’t reply. His eyebrows were furrowed as he wrote something down on the back of some piece of paper in the same folder.

“... Commander Rantarou?”

“You’re not part of my squad, just call me Rantarou,” he said, still staring down at the page. “Tell me how you felt.”

Shuuichi frowned. “I’m really not sure. I guess hateful? Spiteful? I don’t know, like it didn’t have any value.”

Rantarou scribbled some bullet points down on the page. “Anything else?”

“No.”

He closed the folder and put it back in his bag. “Those agents were wrong. This still has a pretty substantial anomalous effect. I’m not entirely sure what it does yet, but I want to be careful.”

That wasn’t too surprising to hear considering it was still part of an anomalous object. But it clearly wasn’t drawing people to it and pushing them to bleed to death. So what was it doing?

“Could it have anything to do with those construction guys being angry?” Shuuichi asked. “You mentioned that in your email to me.”

Rantarou paused, then opened the folder back up. He scribbled another note in it.

“Why do we feel so angry at it? It’s just a piece of paper. I wanted to tear it up in my hands, even though I knew it was important.” Nothing about this situation felt right at all.

“Anything else?”

“I… guess that’s it, but it’s still weird.” Something still felt weird.

Rantarou nodded, wrote down another bullet point, then closed the folder. “Thanks for your work today. It was nice talking to you.”

Something was definitely off.

Shuuichi fiddled with his fingers, then gathered the courage to look up directly at Rantarou. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“Go for it.”

“If this paper had an anomalous effect on everyone that came into contact with it, why are you not affected by it?”

With that, Rantarou laughed, something Shuuichi was learning was never a good sign. He slid the folder back into his bag and locked eyes with him. “Let me give you a question in return. Why do you think I’m the commander of a group called ‘Survivors’?”

The rest of the helicopter ride was silent.

* * *

Rantarou’s face when they stepped back onto the grounds of Site V3 was something Shuuichi never wanted to see on someone as calm as him: full of murderous intent and ready to throttle the first person he saw.

“Excuse me,” Rantarou said, “but  _ what the fuck?” _

The site was unrecognizable. Certain parts of the facility were caved in, creating a pool of debris where the actual room was supposed to be. Blood was splattered across the front of the main entrance. There were bloody footprints leading out of the building. Every other helicopter was missing from the facility.

Shuuichi fell to his knees and covered his eyes. No, no, no, no, no, this was  _ not _ happening. Nothing was real. Nothing.

Rantarou was on the phone with someone, yelling even. Shuuichi could catch bits and pieces like “Why the hell wasn’t I called in for this?” and “How could a containment breach happen this quickly?”, but the rest was like radio static.

Everything was blurry. Rantarou’s voice was slowly drifting further and further away.

Shuuichi lied down, and the next thing he knew, everything was black.

* * *

_ To: Site V3 [see attached members]  
_ _ From: Site Director Kirumi (tkirumi@sitedirectors.scp.fo)  
_ _ Subject: Containment Breach _

_ Hello, _

_ As I’m sure everyone is aware, there was a massive containment breach yesterday. SCP-012, SCP-093, SCP-1609, SCP-3740, and others broke containment. We are still investigating how their containment could be broken at the same time. For the time being, no one is to step foot onto Site V3 until further notice. All work must be conducted electronically on the official Foundation website. _

_ Unfortunately, we have lost a few personnel today in the breach. Their families were given condolences and will be cared for financially for the rest of their lives. Rest in peace. _

_ Researchers who must prepare for trial have been notified separately. All SCPs have been recontained at this time. _

_ Regards,  
_ _ Kirumi T.  
_ _ V3 Site Director _

* * *

_ To: Agent Shuuichi (sshuuichi@scp.fo)  
_ _ From: Site Director Kirumi (tkirumi@sitedirectors.scp.fo)  
_ _ Subject: Website Login _

_ Our official website is  _ _ here _ _. Your login is the information on your keycard. You’ll know which one. _

* * *

**Shuuichi:** were you on site when the breach happened?  
**Kaito:** yeah  
**Shuuichi:** …  
**Shuuichi:** i would ask what happened, but i don’t want to know

* * *

It was the twenty-third phone call.

“Kaede? Hello? Are you there?”

End call.

It was the twenty-fourth phone call.

* * *

“Do you know what’s happening with Kaede?”

Kaito took in a deep breath before speaking into his phone. “I don’t know, bro. I don’t know.”

The two stayed in the call, silent.

* * *

“Maki? Why are you calling at mid—”

“She was put on trial,” Maki said. There was no hint of emotion in her voice. “She’s been suspended from work for a year. Took a massive pay cut, too.”

“Is she okay?”

“I don’t know.”

She hung up.

* * *

Then the call came at three in the morning.

Shuuichi’s heart stopped when the contact lit up on his screen. He tapped on the accept call button and held his phone up to his ear faster than he had ever done anything before. “Kaede? Hello? Where have you been?”

There was silence on the other line.

“... Hello? Kaede? Are you there?”

“I figured it out, Shuuichi.” Her voice was cold and barren, nothing like the bubbly tone he had been listening to for over a year.

Shuuichi tensed. “Figured what out?”

“SCP-012. I’ve been working on it nonstop since I was suspended. I holed myself up in this room, asked one of my colleagues to send me a transcription of the new stuff, and now here I am.” A flurry of papers rustling came out of the speaker. “All—All this stuff. I haven’t slept in two days.”

“That’s not healthy.”

“I know. I don’t really care. Do I deserve to be healthy after killing all those people?”

Something struck at Shuuichi’s heart, and he was left out of breath. “Kaede—”

“No. I really don’t, but I’m here anyway, so I might as well try to make up for it somehow.” A shuffle of papers, then typing on a keyboard. “I’m typing up the report right now, but I figured you deserved to hear it from me first.”

“What is it?”

There was a pause (and grunts of Kaede fumbling to set up her keyboard) before three distinct notes played, then a flurry of notes descended down. The music continued at a moderate speed. Each note was placed carefully, tenderly. A few basic chords were mixed in with single notes, but the simplicity didn’t detract from its quality. Then the music stopped.

“Do you hear it?” Kaede asked softly, her voice close to a whisper. “I heard it.”

Shuuichi shook his head before remembering she couldn’t see him and said, “No, what am I supposed to be listening for?”

Then her tone transformed into the same one Shuuichi had heard on his first day in SCP-012’s chambers. “Hurrian Hymn number six, the oldest melody we have. Isn’t it just… precious? So simple, but so delightful. I would recognize it anywhere, and of course, I recognized it in the sheet music while playing it.” She played a single note, then spoke when it faded out. “There’s other pieces laid out on top of it. If we can figure out how to decipher it, then we have a record of every piece that’s ever been played in history. But…”

“But? Isn’t this exciting for the music world? I-I mean, I’m not exactly a professional, but I assume musicians everywhere would be amazed.”

She sighed, the wondrous curiosity in her voice gone and bland again. She sounded tired. “But how much more blood is that going to take, Shuuichi? More than twenty people died for this thing while it was in Foundation hands. We’re not sure how many did for the cover page you and Rantarou found and for the first few lines of the music we already had.”

Shuuichi paused. “That’s what happened?”

“... Yes,” Kaede said, her voice choking up. “SCP-012 broke containment. It was my fault. It got into a small office building before we recontained it.”

“Kaede…”

“No. I deserve all the punishment I got and more. Because we may have made a breakthrough on understanding SCP-012, but what happens when we hit Jesus’s crucifixion date in music history? How many more people need to die for us to even hit that year? That’s, what, 33 AD? The Hurrian Hymn was in 1400 BCE. So much more unnecessary blood shed for what?” She broke into a sob.

There were only two truly viable answers to her question: the piece goes on as normal or ends humanity, or at least comes close to it. Further study just wasn’t worth the risk to anyone, music professional or not.

“I’m so sorry,” she cried. There was a thud indicated she had brought her hand to her mouth to muffle the noise, but to no avail. “I saw them. I saw all their bodies on the floor around it. It was all my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Shuuichi said.

She sniffed, and a few more light sobs followed. “Isn’t that a nice lie to believe? But I just—god, I don’t know what happened. One minute I was checking my transcription of SCP-012 and then I was in the middle of the office, watching people die in front of me.”

A memory issue…? But Kaede wasn’t known to have a bad memory, nor would she ever do something like this intentionally, even if coerced. Shuuichi was sure of it.

“I’m sorry you and Rantarou had to go on that mission for nothing,” Kaede said. “I have to terminate this thing. SCP-012-1 included.”

“SCP-012-1?”

“The cover page. That’s what it is. I’ll terminate it. I have to.”

Shuuichi didn’t know what to say.

“Goodnight, Shuuichi. I’ll see you in a year.”

Then the other line went dead.

* * *

_ To: Site Director Kirumi (tkirumi@scp.fo)  
_ _ From: Senior Researcher Kaede (akaede@scp.fo)  
_ _ Subject: SCP-012 _

_ I have made all the progress I can make on SCP-012. Further research would be a massive waste of human life. Permission to terminate SCP-012 and SCP-012-1? _

* * *

_ To: Ethics Committee Director (ecdirector@ec.scp.fo)  
_ _ From: Site Director Kirumi (tkirumi@sitedirectors.scp.fo)  
_ _ CC: Senior Researcher Kaede (akaede@scp.fo)  
_ _ Subject: SCP-012 _

_ I have made all the progress I can make on SCP-012. Further research would be a massive waste of human life. Permission to terminate SCP-012 and SCP-012-1? _

* * *

_ To: Site Director Kirumi (tkirumi@sitedirectors.scp.fo)  
_ _ From: Ethics Committee Director (ecdirector@ec.scp.fo)  
_ _ CC: Senior Researcher Kaede (akaede@scp.fo)  
_ _ Subject: Re: SCP-012 _

_ Permission not granted. But all research shall be halted on SCP-012 and SCP-012-1 until further notice. Update its corresponding entry in the archive. _

* * *

_ To: Site Director Kirumi (tkirumi@sitedirectors.scp.fo)  
_ _ From: Ethics Committee Director(ecdirector@ec.scp.fo)  
_ __ Subject: The Obvious

_ The Department of Disinformation took care of everything. The public knows nothing. _

_ And for the love of god, don’t let this happen again. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> scp-012: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-012  
> scp-093: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-093  
> scp-1609: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1609  
> scp-3740: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3740
> 
> also someone ask me what my interpretation of scp-012-1 is ;-;


End file.
